































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































> • 






















' 

< t 

































\ 


Priscilla’s Love-Story 



Priscilla’s Love-Story 


Harriet Prescott Spofford 

AUTHOR OF “A MASTER SPIRIT” 
“an inheritance” 
“a scarlet poppy” 


I 


HERBERT S. STONE & COMPANY 
CHICAGO & NEW YORK 
MDCCCXCVTII 


1st C , 

ias^ v 


TWO COPIES RECEIVED 

%\W10F 


MAE 1 9 7898 


?e "" r 0 f CoV^ 


/sje 








TZ3 

.S'] fesTw 

COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY 
HERBERT S. STONE & CO. 


THANKS ARE DUE TO MESSRS. HARPER AND BROTHERS 
FOR THE COURTESY OF REPUBLICATION IN BOOKFORM 


Priscilla’s Love-Story 


I 



HE sun fell through the row of 


many-paned windows in a broad 
beam over Priscilla’s plants, and espe¬ 
cially over a crab-cactus in full bloom, 
every rosy flower of which was like a 
live being, with the shower of long, yel¬ 
low, dusty stamens that tumbled out of 
the backward-bent petals all alert and 
listening; and the room with its warm, 
flowery life seemed an oasis in the 
great snow desert of the hill country 
outside. 

It was Priscilla herself as much as 
the flowers that gave this room its 



PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


summery suggestion — the tall, fair 
creature, with nothing slight or frail 
about her, but moulded like a young 
goddess, with large, firm curves; with 
creamy skin, where the velvet cheek 
was only less carmine than the glorious 
cactus flower on the shelf above; with 
yellow hair, whose massive braids, 
half-escaped from the comb just now, 
had fallen on her neck; with the smile 
that did not quite break to dimples, 
but warmed the deep azure of the gold- 
fringed eyes till their glance was itself 
at once a smile and a caress. 

But if that glance were a caress, it 
was all the caress she gave, except for 
the motion of that lifted hand on the 
long hanging spray of the cactus. 
With all her bounteousness of aspect 
a singular reserve was mingled, which 
if it filled Jerome Salter’s heart with 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 

longing, filled him also with dismay. 
He was not quite ready to ask this 
beautiful girl to be his wife, but he 
was quite ready to prevent her be¬ 
ing the wife of any one else—that great 
out-door fellow of a George Pastner, 
for instance, with the vast farm and 
game-preserves in the hills beyond. 
As for Jerome, he was yet in college, 
and his fate depended on an uncle who 
had other views for him, who was 
waiting to take him to Europe on his 
graduation, to show him the world and 
the ways of the world, to initiate him 
into something that Jerome called life 
—the pleasure-loving fellow that he 
was, only too ready for this gay fu¬ 
ture; a slender youth, with a certain 
dark beauty of his own, and who had 
perhaps attracted Priscilla by her 
necessity of pitying everything that 
3 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


seemed weak and needing to be made 
strong. 

Not that Priscilla was aware of this; 
few people would have thought of 
pitying Jerome Salter. It was only 
that the truth in her nature was as il¬ 
luminating as a sunbeam; and yet the 
pity from which love springs, and into 
which love resolves, was so all-unsus¬ 
pected by her that she thought it was 
herself for whom she felt it. Indeed, 
when she glanced at Jerome, and 
caught the glow of his dreamy eye 
beneath the thick black lashes, saw the 
droop of the full lip beneath the triste 
mustache, saw the color mount and 
flash and fade on the tawny cheek, 
and heard that low voice whose 
every tone had an inner thrill like mu¬ 
sic, and felt her own heart flutter and 
sink and all her nerves grow tenser, she 


4 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


knew that it was she and not he who 
was to be pitied. Why had she ever 
let herself go in this way? Why had 
she not waited to be wooed before she 
was won? Why, why? And anger 
with herself reacted as if she were 
angry with him, and made her answer 
him briefly. 

4 ‘Curt and to the point as a Greek 
chorus,” said he, leaning his arm on 
the high shelf and overlooking her. 
Priscilla knew nothing about Greek 
choruses. “Are you troubled? Is 
anything the matter?” he demanded. 

“Nothing.” 

“Nothing? You are not apt to let 
nothing bring you to naught. Are 
you ill?” he asked, when she did not 
smile. 

“Do I look ill?” and she turned 
with her proud calm air. 

5 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


“No, by Jove! You look the incar¬ 
nation of boundless health and beauty. 
Now what are you angry about?” as 
she turned again as quickly. “Is it— 
Priscilla—-because—because I spoke of 
going away?” he urged, in a gentler 
tone. 

‘ 4 Because you spoke of going away ?’ * 
she answered, slowly. “Really,” with 
half a shrug, “what is it to me whether 
you go or whether you stay?” 

“Apparently not anything.” 

“Oh, no. That is not kind,” said 
Priscilla. “I am very glad you should 
have the chance. I think it is very 
good of your uncle — for I do n’t be¬ 
lieve he is quite satisfied with what you 
have done.” 

“Now, Priscilla, how do you know he 
is not satisfied? Because you think so 
poorly of me yourself?” 

6 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


“I never said I thought poorly of 
you,” faltered Priscilla, looking down. 

“But you think, with the talents I 
have, I ought to be valedictorian in¬ 
stead of wasting my time writing love- 
songs and coming out nowhere.’ 

‘ ‘ I never said so, ’ 9 said Priscilla again. 

“No, not you, no! Some things go 
without saying. Well, it *s of no con¬ 
sequence. I never heard of a valedic¬ 
torian in his class ever doing anything 
else; did you? If I get the degree 
anyway, the others may have all that 
comes with the summa and the laude . 
What shall I care about that when I am 
rocking among the Hebrides; when I am 
mooning in a gondola round the water¬ 
ways of Venice; when I am simmer¬ 
ing up the Nile, and finding life sweet 
in the shadow of old temples; when 
I am in Greece, all sea and sky, and 
7 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


the spirits of old heroes, old poets, 
old beauty? Oh, I say, Priscilla,” 
walking up and down the room now 
with his hands in his pockets, “how 
flat it seems to talk of going through 
all that alone! What should I care 
for the miles of sea and foam round 
Fingal’s Cave without you along; for 
the Lido, for Philae, for blue Galilee? 
No, no; prensus in Algio without you 
—it would be simply banishment and 
punishment! I would rather fag on 
here forever and go without Europe—” 

“And your uncle’s fortune?” 

“Priscilla, I believe you love money 
more than I do.” 

Priscilla made a backward movement 
of her wrist that was half an accusa¬ 
tion. It said for her, “How do you 
dare say a thing so false, when you 
know I am in this low room, with its 
8 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


braided mats, its homespun curtains, 
its sketches of my own pencil, its rude 
chairs and lounges, because I do not 
love money, because I have loved you 
better than money!” 

“Oh, I know,” responded Jerome. 
“What a tragedy queen you are, Pris¬ 
cilla! You ought to go on the stage. 
Lady Macbeth, that Scottish thane's 
wife, should have been blonde and 
sumptuous like you. Oh, I know you 
could leave this any day for George 
Pastner’s lodge in the wilderness, the 
palace that it is! Great Scott! I 
do n't see why you do n’t.” 

She looked at him a moment, 
startled out of her enforced calm; and 
then, in spite of herself, the tears 
swam, and made her blue eyes as ten¬ 
der and divine as twilight heaven, as 
she sank into the low chair at hand. 


9 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


And in another moment he was on his 
knees beside her, with his arms lifted 
about her, drawing her over towards 
him, kissing her passionately, bursting 
into a great sob of joy, and laying his 
head on her breast. 

It was characteristic of Priscilla that 
at that moment she clasped her arms 
round him and held him, and bent her 
head over him, not like a sweetheart, 
but like a mother. And then he had 
lifted his face, with the tears on it still, 
was kissing her throat, her cheek, her 
lips. 

“My God!” he said; “you are so 
beautiful.” 

His words hurt Priscilla a little even 
in that throb of ecstasy. She took his 
face in her two hands and held it off a 
space. To her that was the most 
beautiful thing in heaven or on earth. 


IO 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


But she would not have said it. Love 
was so far beyond beauty. 

“I love you so,” she said. 

And then there came a sound over¬ 
head as of the pushing back of chairs and 
of restless feet going back and forth; 
and other feet, slower, heavier, that had 
something like the tread of a soldier, 
George Pastner’s feet, came down the 
stairs, and the door opened and closed 
behind them. 

“Oh!” cried Priscilla, drawing back, 
“I have done wrong!” And then her 
head fell forward on her lover’s shoul¬ 
der, and rested there. 

How sweet to live thus forever! 
Just to rest and feel his presence, to be 
filled and surrounded with his love, to 
ask no more of fate! If this moment 
were but eternity! Then the steps 
overhead made themselves felt through 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


all the sweetness of the dream, swift, 
eager steps, in narrow space—so some 
madman might walk to and fro the 
length of his chain, some creature in 
its cage. She lifted her head and her 
lover saw that she had grown very pale. 
“I don’t know what to do!” she said. 
“I do n’t know what to do!” 

If Jerome Salter felt at that instant 
that he also did not know what to do, 
now that she had confessed all he had 
longed for and implored, if even in the 
deliciousness of this the first time he 
had ever touched her lips or put his 
arms about her or won from her any 
expression of her love, he was aware 
that he had gone further than he had 
a right, than was best for him as yet, 
he had no time to echo her words, for 
the steps came bounding down the 
stairs, and there was only an instant in 


12 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


which to start to his feet and stand 
leaning against the shelf as before, 
when the door quickly opened, and 
there came in a person whom you 
might have taken for a child, a beau¬ 
tiful child; but who at another glance 
it was evident was a youth of twenty- 
one or two, whose face was as precise 
a counterpart of Priscilla’s as delicate 
health and its nervous peevishness, a 
stronger intellect, a different sex, could 
allow; but whose body was the 
dwarfed and deformed shape of a boy 
of twelve. He was Priscilla’s twin 
brother, Geoffrey, and there existed 
between them the tie that always gives 
twin children a part of either’s life, 
and which was made closer from the 
fact that he had never been well from 
his birth, so that Priscilla felt that she 
had absorbed into her own abounding 
13 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


being all his portion of strength and 
vitality. 

She had not attempted to move, as 
Jerome had done, but still sat slightly 
bent forward, a glow like the blush of 
a rose mounting and suffusing all her 
face; and as Geoffrey’s eyes fell on it 
the scorn pictured in his rapid glance 
was such that one asked if all the 
sweetness of nature had been absorbed 
by Priscilla too, and left him only in¬ 
tellectual force — force thwarted and 
frustrated by his physical misfortune, 
and likely to become only bitterness of 
soul. He gave Jerome a short word, 
taking no notice of the cushions that 
the latter sprang to shake up in the 
arm-chair, but standing with his hand 
on the open door, as if awaiting the 
other’s departure. 

“This is quite contrary to our un- 
H 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


derstanding,” he said, his head thrown 
back. And dwarfed and hunched as he 
was, he was quite the master of the 
situation. 

“I suppose one may be allowed to 
tell good news and to say farewell to 
his friends and acquaintances—” 

‘‘Farewell!” exclaimed Priscilla. 

Jerome laughed. His dark and 
splendid face was full of joy and tri¬ 
umph. “For to-day,” he said, and 
bent and raised her fingers to his 
lips, and crossed the room and laid 
his hand on Geoffrey’s shoulder, at 
first as if he would bend tenderly to 
a girl, and then as if he would wheel 
him round angrily, and thought better 
of it, and laughed gayly and was gone. 

“I see it all,” said Geoffrey then. 
“This is just once too often. Oh, if 
he was n’t so enticing a scamp, so 
15 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


sweet a manner, so ‘bad and mad and 
sad’ a rogue! If I didn’t love him 
more than you do yourself!” 

“I?” murmured Priscilla, faintly. 

“More than you think you do, let us 
say,” said the dwarf, climbing and 
settling himself in the arm-chair, tall 
then among his cushions. “For if you 
really cared for Jerome Salter, Pris¬ 
cilla,” he said, with a flash of the 
eyes that were a shade less blue than 
the sky-beams of Priscilla’s, “you 
would never let him risk his future, the 
development of his talents, all his 
chances at fortune with his uncle’s ap¬ 
proval, on the rock of a premature 
love-affair, a penniless wife.” 

“Do you think, then,” faltered Pris¬ 
cilla, “that success, gratified ambition, 
money in hand, are so much more 
worth than love—just love?” 

16 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


“ That for love—just love!” said the 
little despot in the arm-chair, snapping 
his fingers. “Do you remember Ro¬ 
meo in love with Rosalind just before 
Juliet makes fate for him? Do you 
suppose Jerome Salter* going out in 
the world, will not be terribly ham¬ 
pered by a Rosalind that clings—” 

“We have been all over this so often, 
Geoff,” she said, wearily. 

“And shall have to go all over it as 
many times more, if the folly holds 
out.” 

“Very well, then,” said Priscilla, 
gazing steadily at him. “I mean that 
it will hold out, if you call faithfulness 
folly. Jerome will no more change 
than I, and the sun will fall from 
heaven before I do.” 

“Before you fall from heaven. Well 
put. Before you fall from a fool’s 
17 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


paradise. In the name of goodness 
what is this love, this infatuation? 
Why are you willing to leave me, your 
own other self, born with you, more 
than born with you, bred with you, 
a part of you, for this fellow whom you 
never saw till three years ago? Yes, 
yes — enchanting fellow — whole and 
hale, I know; not the broken, ruined, 
half-made-up thing I am. Yet still it 
seems to me—I flatter myself, doubt¬ 
less — that I am something better 
worth.” 

“Oh, Geoffrey darling, don’t you 
see—it is n’t a question of worth—it— 
it’s something of nature—you cannot 
help it—it comes just as the sun comes 
up in the sky!” 

“Why does n’t it come to me then? 
Oh, you needn’t speak! I will spare 
you the trouble of saying.” 

18 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


“Oh, Geoffrey!” 

“There, there, Priscilla! I suppose 
no one was ever born with less tact 
than you have. I suppose it would be 
impossible for any one to make me 
feel my misfortune more frequently 
than you do—” 

“Oh, what have I said, what have I 
done, Geoffrey?” turning towards him 
with outstretched hands. “You know, 
you must know, I never thought of it. 
You have n’t any misfortune in my 
eyes. When I look at you you are 
perfectly beautiful—’ ’ 

“I haven’t any misfortune? It 
takes a man’s sister to say that, who 
sees him crippled, shapeless—” 

“Oh, Geoffrey!” exclaimed Pris¬ 
cilla, springing to her feet, “I believe 
you are driving me wild.” 

“I driving you wild?” But the 


19 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


door had closed, and Priscilla had es¬ 
caped ; and escaped, as Geoffrey meant 
she should, with a very decided diver¬ 
sion from the recent preoccupation of 
her mind. 

Geoffrey waited a little while, and 
then he let himself down laboriously 
from his chair and went to the piano 
—Priscilla was the music-teacher of 
the little town suburban to the college 
town, giving lessons even to some few 
of the students, of whom Jerome had 
been one—and he began to play at first 
the broken chords of his own fancy, 
and then the wild measures of the Peer 
Gynt dances over and over, as if he re¬ 
joiced in the bitter mockery of the un¬ 
canny music, as if he danced there with 
his fellow gnomes and trolls; and at 
last the mad merriment of Chopin’s 
Tarentella. Priscilla heard him where 


20 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


she lay sobbing in her little room, and 
listened, unable to reconcile her per¬ 
plexed emotions, to untangle the coil 
of her pity for Geoffrey and her love 
for Jerome. Her thoughts had gone 
far away with her, and she started as 
if she had been asleep; and then she 
was aware of a softer note in the mu¬ 
sic, although it seemed to be filling the 
air and throbbing all about her. 

Geoffrey was still playing, but what 
different strains; utterly sad, heart¬ 
broken, complaining minors of his own, 
the air of Schubert’s “Wanderer,” 
fragments of the Tristan und Isolde 
music—when Priscilla, with her tear- 
swollen eyes hidden by her veil, came 
down and went out to her scholars, 
leaving him to a sort of revel in sor¬ 
row, playing himself, indeed, into a 
mood of exceeding happiness with the 


21 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


all unutterable beauty of parts of the 
Sonata appassionata . She was coming 
home from her lessons, tired by one 
dull girl’s heavy fingers and stolid brains, 
saddened with another’s facility, feeling 
her breath come quickly, almost to suf¬ 
focation, with the remembrance of her 
love and joy, with the vision of 
Jerome’s face before her mind’s eye, 
feeling a weight of terror settle on 
her as she drew nearer to Geoffrey 
and his anger and his sorrow and the 
ever-fresh and present need of her 
compassion. Life was so hard for 
Geoffrey, all experience so bitter. 
When he saw the college youths in 
their vigor of comeliness, himself crip¬ 
pled and set apart, his nature had 
bade fair to grow as warped with envy 
and indignation as his body was with 
deformity; and now, conscious of great 


22 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


powers paralyzed by poverty, and see¬ 
ing Jerome win away from him the one 
thing in the world he had to love— 
what could be more bitter? “Oh, 
poor Geoffrey!” she cried out, sharply, 
as she went her way. ‘ ‘ Poor Geoffrey! ’ ’ 
The brook was roaring along, black 
in its icy borders below her and beside 
her as she went; the sunset was paling 
with rich pomegranate hues over 
long fields of snow in the gap of the 
mountains; a star came trembling 
out there, and then a thin scarf of 
cloud blew over, and a young moon 
hung like the petal of a flower dropped 
from some mighty hand, and was gone 
in the great shadow below that held 
the coming storm. There was a soft 
crystalline darkness in the air, and no 
sound in the universe, it seemed, but 
that of the tinkle of the brook and the 


23 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


crisp snow under her feet, when she 
heard the galloping of a horse down 
the bridle-path. She knew it was Mr. 
Pastner’s horse before his great black 
shadow fell upon the air as he stopped 
at her side and his rider threw himself 
off, and holding the bridle on his arm, 
went along with her. He looked, 
towering beside her, as large, as pow¬ 
erful, as the creature whose head was 
over his shoulder. His presence 
seemed the one thing she could not 
bear. “You must let me go with 
you, ’ ’ he said. “ It is surely unsafe for 
you at this hour alone. And I have 
an errand with Geoffrey concerning the 
model — some nuts and bolts that 
he has found necessary.” 

“Oh, the model, yes.” How she 
hated that model, its senseless brass 
and steel! She had felt from the be- 


24 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


ginning that she was to be crushed in 
its grasp at last. And yet it was Geof¬ 
frey’s soul that was shut up in it; she 
could not help furthering it and be¬ 
ing fascinated by its promise. But 
she said no more. 

She had intimated to Mr. Pastner, 
in every way she knew, that it was 
useless for him to seek her directly, 
and she wished him to understand 
that it was equally useless to seek 
her through any interest in Geoffrey 
and his model. She rebuked herself 
for that; she knew that his friendship 
for Geoffrey would have been the 
same had she not existed. But a de¬ 
fiant mood came and overpowered the 
mood of perplexity; the very presence 
of Mr. Pastner brought it. Doubt and 
trouble spread their wings to fly away; 
the fact that this man existed made 


25 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


doubly vivid to her the existence of 
Jerome and his love. Why should she 
sacrifice both herself and Jerome to 
Geoffrey’s ambition? Let him be happy 
some other way; they could see to that. 
All that she wanted now was to be 
alone with her memory of the morning, 
still to feel the touch of those lips, still 
those arms about her, still to hear that 
low voice, still to let all her soul go out 
in this vivid new phase, this vital ex¬ 
perience of love. 

Mr. Pastner left his horse under 
cover, and followed her in, going di¬ 
rectly where the light shone in Geof¬ 
frey’s work-room, which he had left at 
an earlier hour; for he seemed to be 
almost as much interested in that in¬ 
vention on which Geoffrey was spend¬ 
ing the strength of his poor life as 
Geoffrey was himself. 

26 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 

Priscilla put away her wraps, and 
went into the sitting-room to rest by 
the low fire in the dusk there, still with 
her mood of joy upon her. It was not 
for any long time, however, that she 
could let this luxury of happiness fill 
and feed and warm her. Mr. Pastner 
came down and went out, and Geof¬ 
frey’s laborious step was on the stair. 

“Pastner will stay to tea,’’ he said. 

“Oh! Is it necessary?’’ asked Pris¬ 
cilla. 

“Yes. It is necessary,” said Geof¬ 
frey, with his back against the door. 
“He is of use to me. I should think 
even you could appreciate the pains he 
has taken to get those things for me 
to-day. He is going to stay late into 
the night with me. He has gone out 
to put up his horse now.” 

“Oh, well, then, I will leave tea 
27 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


ready, and Martha can serve it. I am 
going to bed, for I am tired.” 

“You are going to do nothing of 
the sort,” cried Geoffrey. “You are 
going to be at the table and make it 
bright and cheerful. I am in a glori¬ 
ous frame for getting through my diffi¬ 
culties. If my nerves are not all upset 
by your tempers, your vagaries, I shall 
come out on open ground with this 
thing, and lay my hand on fame and 
fortune, hunchback or no hunchback.” 

“Geoffrey dear, why do you dwell 
on what no one notices after once 
knowing you ? And do you really 
think I have such tempers?” she asked, 
with a break in the soft voice. 

“I think you are the dearest, the 
best, the most beautiful of women and 
sisters. I think you have my life and 
hopes and salvation in your hand. 

28 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


You can help me into heaven or thrust 
me down to hell. I think you are 
going to help me into heaven.” 

Priscilla laughed. But, in spite of 
herself, her mood was shattering and 
melting away, and trouble was again 
surrounding her, vaguely and swiftly 
as the rising of the mountain mists. 
“I suppose that means that you want 
peach marmalade and hot biscuits for 
tea,” she said. 

“And some chili-cum-carne first. 
And a pretty toilette, and a bright 
face, and smiles, and a song, and gen¬ 
eral indulgence, and all your sweet¬ 
ness.” And then he came over and 
lifted the long fallen tress, and laid his 
fevered cheek on her cool face, putting 
his long, weak arms around her. The 
thought came to her of Jerome kneel¬ 
ing and clasping her so in the morning, 
29 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


but, ah, with how different a clasp, in 
all his mobility and beauty! And 
now Geoffrey, just on a level with her 
shoulder as he stood—the pity of it, 
the horror of it! The tears gushed 
forth as he caressed her. “You 
needn’t pity me,’’ he said, winding 
the pale tress about her head. “If my 
invention goes, I want no one’s pity. 
And as for your affection, hasn’t it 
been mine from our cradle? Aren’t 
we the same soul? Do you suppose I 
think for an instant that you are going 
to be false to me? When this momen¬ 
tary fancy of yours passes, you will 
see for yourself how idle it was. 
You will be more glad than I of your 
escape.’’ 

‘ ‘ False to you ?’ ’ stammered Priscilla. 

But Geoffrey laughed. How long 
since she had heard him laugh as light- 
30 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


ly! And saying, “The blue chiffons 
now, and smiles, and hot biscuits and 
marmalade, of course!” he had gone 
back to his task. 

For a pause Priscilla hesitated. She 
would go to her room and to bed, and 
let things take care of themselves. And 
then again the pity of it tore her ten¬ 
der heart. And, moreover, notwith¬ 
standing his ill health, his fretfulness 
and deformity, this brother of hers 
had a dominating strength of nature; 
she had a sort of reverence for his 
intellect, too. To have his contempt 
was something she could not have en¬ 
dured; to give him pleasure was the 
habit of her life. Until of late they 
had been of one mind, one emotion in 
all things. 

She went to her room after she had 
given old Martha the directions for tea, 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


and had laid the table herself, adding a 
handful of the precious crab-cactus 
blossoms in a glass vase; and she came 
down with a shine on her hair, a glow 
on her cheek, a smile on her lip, daz¬ 
zling withal in the blue chiffons that 
Geoffrey liked; and she seemed to Mr. 
Pastner the very ideal of the bloom of 
a June morning as it had dawned on 
him many a time in his dewy gardens far 
up the hill, under clear, overarching 
heavens, and with the undulating land¬ 
scape far below. There was a sort of 
dreamy sweetness, too, about Priscilla 
that night, the aura of her earlier happi¬ 
ness yet lingering around her, and curv¬ 
ing the corners of her lips with an in¬ 
terior sort of smile, the trouble of her 
later doubt yet veiling some of the lustre 
of her eyes. It made both Geoffrey and 
Mr. Pastner feel a great tenderness for 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


her. And while it in no wise changed 
Geoffrey’s determination regarding her, 
it gave Mr. Pastner pause, till it seemed 
to him that, let what would come to 
himself, her happiness must be secured 
before all things. 

Nothing could be gayer or more en¬ 
chanting than Geoffrey was that night, 
his high seat on the cushions giving 
him much the usual dignity of a man 
at his own table, although it was an 
exceptional man that would not have 
appeared something less beside the 
other, whose great stature and well- 
knit frame might have belonged to one 
of the Anakim. And when Martha 
had taken out the tea things, Priscilla 
sang—some gentle German Lieder , 
some joyous old Jacobite songs. 

‘‘Those are the things to sing,” said 
Geoffrey — “the people’s songs, the 
33 


PRISCILLA'S LOVE-STORY 


things full of live emotions, the emo¬ 
tions common to the race.” 

“The songs that are more than 
codes and laws,” said Mr. Pastner. 

“Yes. And sung in such a voice as 
that! A voice to fire a multitude! 
What a voice it would be if it had had 
the training such a voice ought to 
have! You would be a prima donna 
assoluta, sister mine. How would it 
please you to see some great throng 
hanging breathless on your tones? 
How would the clapping hands, the 
tossing flowers, the raptures you gave, 
the fact that you commanded their 
tears, their joys, held their beings for 
the moment in your hand—how would 
all that please you?” 

“Not half so much,” said Priscilla, 
with a laugh, “as singing to you.” 

“And Pastner. Well, it would 


34 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


please me. I would say in my thoughts 
to that throng, ‘See, this is I; part of 
my being, born at one birth, of one 
thought, with one life; those tones are 
mine, or all the same as mine; it is my 
genius that fills them and wrings your 
tears; it is I, I who am singing!’ Ah, 
well, it is no use! What did Provi¬ 
dence mean,” he cried, with a fierce 
and sudden change from his genial 
phase, “by giving us such things—you 
such a voice, me such inventive power 
—and then holding back all the means 
for bringing them into use?” 

“They are not held back,” said Mr. 
Pastner, suddenly; and it was perhaps 
bending over the fire toward which he 
was holding his hands that made the 
veins stand out so on his forehead. 
“They are yours if you will.” 

“Oh,” said Priscilla, lightly, “Geof- 
35 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


frey’s power will prove itself. And as 
for me, to lift my voice with others, in 
some great church choir is all the 
dream I have.” 

“And dream enough,” said Mr. 
Pastner. 

“Well,” said Geoffrey, “if I am 
going to prove myself, I must 
away to the prover. I think I see my 
way through that last bearing. Come, 
Pastner.” 

Mr. Pastner waited a moment till he 
was gone, and then went towards Pris¬ 
cilla just turning from the piano. 
“The great Norse giant,” she was 
saying to herself, conscious all the 
same of a kindly feeling, as if she could 
not love one man with all the force of 
her love and not have a certain warm 
interest in all other men. And then 
the calm depth of that gray eye as she 
36 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


met its glance made her uneasy, the 
smile of that rather melancholy mouth, 
according with the nobility of the 
white brow over the suntanned face, 
gave her reassurance, while something 
about its being fine to have a giant’s 
strength, but tyrannous to use it like 
a giant, was running through her 
mind. 

“I am a useless piece of humanity,” 
he said, in a low tone, “unless you 
make me of use. I want you to un¬ 
derstand that I and all I have are 
yours, to hold, to use, to throw 
away.” 

“Oh, no, no!” cried Priscilla, thrust¬ 
ing out both her hands before her. 
But he only bowed and closed the 
door. 


37 



II 


P RISCILLA was so worn out with 
the fervors and fevers of the day 
that when her head touched her pil¬ 
low, she drowsed away at once into 
a fitful slumber. She had a dull con¬ 
sciousness of voices and steps, par¬ 
tially waking her in what seemed the 
middle of the night, of a wild rustling 
and roaring of the wind, of a surprised 
exclamation about snow, of Geoffrey’s 
protesting voice, of the steps returning, 
and of her saying to herself wearily 
that a sudden storm had come up out 
of that shadow in the mountain-gap, 
that Geoffrey had not let Mr. Pastner 
go out in it, but he had put him in the 
39 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


spare room; and then she was off again 
and lost in deep sleep. She awoke 
suddenly with a sensation that she had 
overslept herself, that it was bright 
day. Her next sensations came in 
rapid successions—that somewhere a 
stove was smoking, that something was 
scorching, that the whole outside world 
was a cloud of sparks, that the house 
was on fire. 

To thrust her feet into a pair of 
shoes, to throw her wrapper and her 
long cloak over her, to seize an armful 
of the first clothing within reach, was 
all done in the three seconds as she 
rushed for Geoffrey’s room. He was 
not there; and just as Mr. Pastner, 
who, also, had hurried there, dashed 
out of it, old Martha darted by them, 
screaming, in a voice muffled by the 
blanket on her head: ‘ ‘ He’s not there! 


4 o 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 

He’s out doors! He’s gone!” And 
Priscilla ran with them through a welter 
of scorching smoke down the stairs and 
across the little hall, to find the front 
door still closed and locked. Mr. Past- 
ner threw it open and pushed Priscilla 
and old Martha out into the snow. 
“He is not gone out; he is in the work¬ 
shop!” he cried, and sprang back, the 
flames, fanned by the fresh air, bursting 
out about him. It was only a moment 
or two—it seemed a year to Priscilla 
and old Martha huddled together, 
shivering in the storm, with no help 
near, and the long tongues of flame al¬ 
ready shooting from the windows—be¬ 
fore Mr. Pastner came round, having 
sprung from a casement on the back of 
the house to the roof of the shed be¬ 
low, where he let Geoffrey down to the 
ground and jumped after him—Geof- 
4 1 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 

frey who had at first struggled like a 
wild-cat, and had then through sheer 
impotence abandoned himself to his 
fate—the fate of being saved without 
the little demon of brass and wood 
and steel in which he had imprisoned 
his very soul. “Let the house burn!” 
he cried fiercely. “Let it burn! It ’s 
only of a piece with all the rest of the 
way fate uses me! Let it burn to the 
ground! I wish I was in it! What 
did you save me for?” But while his 
imprecations were still rising over the 
roar of the storm and the crackle of 
the flames, Pastner had disappeared. 
In the same instant Priscilla and Mar¬ 
tha rushed to the shed where the horse 
had been tied. They came out, lead¬ 
ing at arm’s length the startled and 
plunging animal, and fastened him to 
a tree at safe distance, just as Mr. 

42 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


Pastner appeared, staggering uncer¬ 
tainly, blackened and singed, in the 
terrible radiance, and in his arms the 
best part of the little monster whose 
overloaded wires had kindled all the 
blaze. 

“Pastner! Pastner!” cried Geoffrey, 
in a fury of joy. “You are the mas¬ 
ter-hand! It isn’t only my life 
you ’ve saved. You ’ve saved my 
soul! Never mind if it is n’t all here 
—a missing bolt, a missing plate—that 
is easily replaced. Do n’t think I shall 
forget this. At the risk of your life! 
There’s friendship! There’s heroism! 
Now let us enjoy the passing moment. 
What are you crying for, Priscilla? 
The house —the home—pshaw! See 
the flames wallow up the night! See 
them swallow the black sky! See 
them glorify the storm ! What a sky, 
43 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


opening and shutting in splendor 
with every belch of flame! See these 
elms — fountains of fire! There is 
nothing so fine as fire! Every flake of 
the snow is a spark of it to-night. 
What? My dear fellow—are you hurt ?” 
For Pastner had sunk against the gar¬ 
den wall, and Priscilla was heaping snow 
upon his burned hands. But people 
were already hurrying up, and were tak¬ 
ing him off to the nearest house, and 
Priscilla turned to hasten Geoffrey after 
them and out of the storm. With the 
flushed and illuminated snow whirling 
and twisting about his strange shape 
and his wild gesticulation like long 
wreaths and spray of fire itself, the little 
creature seemed more an imp of fire 
than a man. “Yes, I will come with 
you, ’ ’ he said. ‘ ‘ I will come with you. 
For there can be only one outcome to 


44 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


this. Pastner has saved my life, and 
more than my life. His reward lies in 
your hands. You will give it to him. 
If I did not feel certain of it, I would 
plunge into that core of fire just as I 
surely should have done had he not 
brought out my works—my more than 
life!” There was no time for promise 
or denial, for assertion or argument. 
Priscilla only felt that she must get 
this raving fellow under shelter; and 
she hurried him along after the others 
—for old Martha had gone on, and 
was already helping the farmer’s wife 
put a bed in order and send a boy as 
fast as he could gallop for the doctor. 
“Oh, he won’t die,” said Geoffrey, 
still in a state of gleeful expansion 
when the doctor had bandaged the 
burns and promised to come around 
later in the morning—for it was now 
45 


PRISCILLA 7 S LOVE-STORY 


quite dawn, and Priscilla had got on 
some clothes and had made Geoffrey 
eat some porridge. “He won’t die! 
He will live to have his reward. I will 
see to that myself.” For the physi¬ 
cian, finding the external injuries but 
slight, had expressed apprehension 
concerning the nervous shock and the 
inhalation of the heated air, and had 
found great difficulty in reviving his 
patient from the swoon. “You must 
go to him,” Geoffrey said to Priscilla. 
“Your touch will do more for him than 
a regiment of doctors can. Is n’t that 
so, doctor?” And seated at the table, 
his face bright and alert, his words had 
superior meaning to those of the little 
atomy with ineffectual strut, and the 
doctor interpreted them as they were 
meant, and of course declared that 
Priscilla’s presence might have the 

46 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


tonic effect desired, and she went into 
the room at once, as she would have 
gone to the bedside of any sufferer. 
But as she saw Mr. Pastner lying there, 
so changed from the strong young 
giant of a few hours before, the deathly 
whiteness of his face, the labored faint¬ 
ing breath, smote her to the heart. 
He had come to this in saving her 
poor Geoffrey, in saving perhaps 
Geoffrey’s reason, too — at any rate, 
his one delight in life. And she fell 
on her knees and in the impulse of 
gratitude and all the moment’s tumul¬ 
tuous excitation of feeling, kissed the 
poor bandaged hand where it lay ex¬ 
tended, exactly as she would have 
kissed a helpless baby’s hand. 

Perhaps she would have done pre¬ 
cisely the same if she had foreseen the 
smile that kindled the white counte- 


47 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


nance. Mr. Pastner lifted the wounded 
hand and laid it on hers. Someone 
pushed a chair toward her; and as she 
sat there with his fingers lying on hers, 
the anger of the nerves died away, and 
under the soothing influence of her 
touch, of her sorrowful eyes with the 
yearning pity of their grateful gaze, 
the eyelids closed, and pain and ten¬ 
sion yielded to the opiate at last. 

“ There! there!” said Geoffrey, 
when he saw Pastner sleeping. 
“That ’s all right. I told you so. It 
is very alarming, this sudden sinking in 
the collapse after great effort. But 
these large-framed men are subject to 
it, I believe. Now I am going to have 
a bath, and see what I can do in the 
way of decency. I believe old Martha 
snatched some clothes for me as she ran. 
How that old tinder-box burned! 

48 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


Well, I have an appointment to meet.” 
Priscilla, confident that old Martha 
would attend to him as usual, did not 
particularly heed him; she was think¬ 
ing how she would let Jerome hear of 
her whereabouts; and she knew noth¬ 
ing about it when her brother sallied 
from the farmhouse and made his way 
to the village inn, where, in answer to 
his inquiry, he was told that Mr. Salter 
had arrived an hour before, on the 
noon coach from the junction. It was 
the elder Mr. Salter—Jerome’s all- 
powerful uncle. 

“I have no apology to make for 
summoning you yesterday, although 
I hardly hoped for so speedy an an¬ 
swer to my telegram,” said Geoffrey, 
after Mr. Salter’s rather stiff saluta¬ 
tion, a salutation which hardly re¬ 
pressed his surprise at the appear- 
49 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


ance of the shapeless little creature 
with the beautiful face, wearing another 
man’s hat and coat. 

But because he was crippled and de¬ 
formed, Geoffrey never abated an iota 
of his dignity as a man, and Mr. Salter 
was at once made to feel that he was 
dealing with serious concerns. “Noth¬ 
ing but imperative duty would warrant 
my sending for you in this weather,” 
said Geoffrey. “I hope you have suf¬ 
fered no inconvenience from the storm. 
Our sharp mountain storms are swift, 
and I think this has blown itself out. 
But the fact is,” he continued as he 
moved a hassock along towards a chair, 
deposited it therein with an effort, and 
mounted and seated himself on equal 
terms, “that my sister and your 
nephew are on the point of a great 
folly. They fancy themselves in love. ’ ’ 


50 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


Mr. Salter made a quick motion of 
dissent and surprise. But if he would 
have spoken, he was prevented by 
Geoffrey’s imperious gesture. ‘‘ Noth¬ 
ing could be worse for my sister,” said 
Geoffrey, “ after the subsidence of the 
temporary fascination. For I know 
her and her needs. And Jerome — 
charming fellow though he is—could 
only make her unhappy in the end. 
The very quick end. Moreover, I have 
other views for her, as you, I am 
sure, have for Jerome.” 

“Certainly I have!” exclaimed Mr. 
Salter, too much in earnest to observe 
the absurd face of things presented by 
this strange little being’s assumption as 
the arbiter of destiny. 

“Quite right,” said Geoffrey. “My 
sister is of no particular family, is with¬ 
out a penny to her name, and her home 
51 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


was last night burned to the ground, 
with nearly all it contained—” 
“Indeed! Very unfortunate.” 
“Perhaps so. Perhaps not. How¬ 
ever, that is neither here nor there. I 
sent for you to use your influence with 
Jerome—’ ’ 

“Most assuredly!” 

“Only let me advise you that it will 
need extreme measures. He told my 
sister yesterday that you had planned 
a trip abroad with him in the vacation. 
I imagine that it may have been 
through startling her with that that he 
obtained her admission. She has 
taught him counterpoint—she is a mu¬ 
sic teacher—and he has taught her 
singing—and something else. They 
have seen much more of each other 
than I—engaged in my own pursuits— 
have liked. Perhaps it would be best 


52 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


to make the trip immediately; he is 
doing nothing at college, nothing at all, 
and will take no honors, even if he 
secures a degree. That is a pity, with 
his natural parts. And then he is 
young.” 

4 ‘May I ask,” said Mr. Salter, who 
had now begun to be amused at this 
arrogant miniature of a man, who was 
declining alliance with his nephew, 
“how old you are?” 

“As old as suffering can make a 
man. ‘I am six thousand years old,’ 
said Marat, you may remember. T 
am as old as human suffering!’ But 
that is nothing to the point, either. 
I presume Jerome will be galloping over 
from the college to-day. The man 
who puts his boy in a fresh-water col¬ 
lege, supposing he is safe there—” 

“Or in a salt-water college either,” 
53 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


said Mr. Salter, making it unnecessary 
to finish the sentence. 

“Yes, the only way to prevent youth 
from having its fling is to shut it up in 
a crippled bo;dy and give it a great 
idea. Yes, ill news travels post; and 
Jerome will be over, expecting to find 
us here at the inn. He will find you. 
I trust it will be enough.” 

“I think you may,” said Mr. Salter 
grimly. And Jerome Salter learned 
that it was enough and more when, 
an hour afterward, he came down 
the snowy road just broken out round 
the mountain, and with a piece of 
hemlock sticking in his hat, a happy, 
handsome, careless fellow, whose joy¬ 
ous contentment changed to dismay at 
the sight of his uncle’s mocking coun¬ 
tenance. There was a stormy hour 
on his part, an hour of raillery, of play- 
54 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


ing with prey, on the uncle’s part; and 
then he rode back with his uncle to his 
rooms, no longer a radiant young hero, 
but a whipped boy. 

* ‘ You must tell her, Geoffrey, ’ ’ wrote 
Jerome that night. “I can’t. I have 
no choice left, unless I would be thrown 
out like a plucked fowl on the snow¬ 
drift. I leave with my uncle for 
France to-night. When I come back I 
know not. He says never. For 
France? For perdition!” 

Geoffrey told Priscilla by placing 
Jerome’s letter before her. “You are 
light in the balance, you see,” said 
Geoffrey. “His uncle offers him idle¬ 
ness, wealth, and pleasure. You offer 
him work and love and home. It was 
easy to see how it would be. And yet 
one would not have expected treachery 
from Jerome.” 


55 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


Priscilla sat alone, after Geoffrey 
went out, in the little room that had 
been lent her in the farmhouse. 
Jerome’s letter was open on her knee; 
but she was not looking at it; her gaze 
was fixed straight ahead on the dead 
white wall. She sat there conscious 
of nothing—simply stunned. 

If such a letter had come to her the 
day but one before, it would have 
given her no such blow, for at that time 
she had not allowed herself to recognize 
her feeling; she had not allowed her¬ 
self to hope. But yesterday the sun 
had burst forth, quickening, vitalizing, 
nourishing her love; it had had clear 
way; it had grown like a gourd in the 
night. If a cloud of misty perplexity 
had followed, still there was the love 
in its perfect flower. And now, full 
and throbbing with her very life, what 
5 6 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


blackening breath and blast from the 
bottomless pit was this that blew over 
it and smote and withered it? She 
asked no such question. She was not 
aware of a single thought or emotion. 
She sat dumb and dead, staring at the 
wall, seeing nothing. 

The women of the house came to the 
door and knocked, and asked if she 
wanted anything, and went away, 
thinking her exhausted from the night’s 
consternation and fatigue, and gone to 
sleep. She never heard them. The 
world might have crashed to its end, 
with the heavens rolling together like 
a scroll, she would not have known it. 

There was a soft glow in the air 
when she became conscious that she 
was alive, with a piece of paper on her 
knee that was like a death-warrant— 
alive and utterly wretched. It was 
57 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


another day, but the sun had not yet 
risen; the daylight bubbled in the 
great cup of the hills, and the whole 
air was full of foaming gold; a faint 
rose-bloom covered the long stretch of 
the interval, deepening far off into rosy 
amethyst, and all at once every crag 
and scar and face of rock burst into a 
blaze of whiteness burning to golden 
glory, and into clear azure sailed the 
sun. What had all this splendor to do 
with her? Oh, nothing! And what was 
her pain in the midst of it? Oh, again 
nothing. How serene, how indiffer¬ 
ent, how unloving was nature! Oh, 
no; how calm, how strong, how al¬ 
ways the same, always there to be 
found, the same now and forever, 
with its calm and its strength, giving 
rest! 

Priscilla broke the ice in her pitcher 
58 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


for a long draught of water; then she 
went to bed for a couple of hours, and 
she crept down stairs at last, very 
faint and white, to be put in a warm 
corner by the farmer’s wife and fed 
from her one china bowl with the dain¬ 
tiest food she had. She watched her 
chance, when the good woman’s back 
was turned, to put Jerome’s letter into 
the fire. And presently she found her 
cloak, and tied a little shawl over her 
head, and went out mechanically to 
give one of the lessons that had been 
interrupted yesterday. 

Geoffrey greeted her when she came 
in towards noon, with an angry reproof 
for exposing herself as she had done, 
with insufficient dress. “You seem to 
think,’’ he said, “that there is no one 
but yourself in the world. Does it never 
occur to you what will become of me, 
59 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


helpless and crippled, if you should 
get your death by this sort of reckless¬ 
ness?” 

“Oh,” said Priscilla, something bit¬ 
terly, something wearily, as if she cared 
nothing, “you will always have the 
model.” 

“My model! Do you know what 
that reckless fellow did in bringing it 
out? He turned it upside down, broke 
the delicate gearing, lost the diamond 
pivots, all but ruined it—ruined it!” 

“Oh, Geoffrey, when the poor soul 
tried to save it for you.” 

“The poor soul! Pastner!” with a 
sharp laugh. “You had better say he 
tried to destroy it! There is nothing 
but the idea left—almost nothing! 
And how am I to revive that out of 
chaos, with house and home gone, with 
no money, no friends, no peace, no 
60 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


quiet? For if we ever get rooms any¬ 
where, that infernal piano of your 
scholars, with its incessant kringle- 
krangle, will grind into my brain like a 
knife-sharpener! I shall go mad; that 
is what I shall do. ’ ’ 

Priscilla saw that he was wrought 
to a pitch of exasperation that was 
nearly irresponsible. In the midst of 
her misery she felt that if all her cheer 
was taken from her, her care yet re¬ 
mained. “You shall have all the quiet 
you want, dear,” she said. “I will 
give the lessons somewhere else. I 
suppose the insurance will rebuild the 
house—” 

“Nothing of the sort,” said Geof¬ 
frey. “That gave out last year.” 

“Geoffrey!” 

“Yes. I had to take the premium 
money for my brass-work. What else 
61 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


was I to do? I ask you, what else was 
I to do, Priscilla?” 

“I thought,” said she, “that Mr. 
Pastner gave you the brass-work.” 

“Do you think I would accept that 
from him, when the only thing I could 
give him in return was denied him?” 
letting himself down to the floor, and 
walking to and fro in a frantic haste 
that had nothing ludicrous in it for 
Priscilla, only something heart-break¬ 
ing. “I said to myself: ‘I shall finish 
the model now. When it is done, it 
brings in far more than house and in¬ 
surance, than thousands, than hundreds 
of thousands of insurance!’ It is my 
fortune and yours together!” he cried, 
wringing his hands. “It is my hope, 
my fame, my glory!” 

“I am afraid it will never be done,” 
said Priscilla, gathering up her things. 

62 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


“It rests with you,” he cried. 
“Whether it is ever done or not rests 
with you!” 

She turned and looked at him, be¬ 
wildered. “With you,” he said. 
“You have the power. You can make 
me, or you can break me. I am clay 
in your hands.” He flung himself 
down before the fire, his voice rising 
almost to a scream, and hid his face in 
his arms, a forlorn, half-crazed little 
wretch, groveling like a worm on the 
good housewife's strip of carpet there. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” 
said Priscilla. “Hush, Geoffrey; you 
are acting like a child; you will wake 
Mr. Pastner; they told me he was 
asleep when I came in.” 

“What is it to you whether he sleeps 
or not?” he answered, his voice half 
stifled in the rug. 


63 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


“I don’t understand you.” 

“You understand me well enough. 
You know if you will marry Pastner 
that all he has is as good as mine; 
that then I can finish my work; that I 
cannot take the money from him un¬ 
less he is my brother; that I will not. 
He will die, they say, and it would 
have been such a mere form, and for 
such a little while, and now, now—oh, 
selfish, selfish, unnatural and selfish!” 

“Geoffrey! My poor boy! my dar¬ 
ling!” she exclaimed, kneeling beside 
him. “You are not yourself.” 

“How can I be myself,” he sobbed, 
“with my life wrecked—the miserable 
little fraction of life that I had—” 

It was true. She thought, as she 
looked at him, how terribly true. It 
was a miserable little fraction of life 
that he had. She had always been 

64 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


troubled with the sense that she herself 
had absorbed all the strength and elas¬ 
ticity, and had left him only the worth¬ 
less remnant. She had tried to make 
it up to him by unceasing care and 
love and fostering. He had been the 
one object of her days, till that bale- 
star of Jerome’s beauty and charm rose 
over her, till this strange glamour of 
passion had overshone her. That pas¬ 
sion was dead. Oh, not only dead, 
but could it ever have existed? Je¬ 
rome, false to her, treacherous to love, 
annihilated himself. That love was 
dead. This love, at any rate, remained, 
must always remain, could never die. 
As she rose and walked up and down 
the room her sore heart ached anew for 
the poor little creature lying there, a 
mockery of humanity, sensitive with 
the sensitive nerves of genius, sensitive 
65 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


with the nerves of a frame whose 
every nerve was bristling, was a sharp 
agony. She felt it would be little to 
die for him; she felt, in the great 
yearning that went out to him, that it 
was little even to live for him. She 
had given her own way for his all her 
life. Why cease now? 

She went and stooped over him. 
“I will marry Mr. Pastner,” she said, 
gently, and then went out of the room. 

For a moment or two the strange, 
wayward being lay there, letting his pas¬ 
sion storm itself out; then sobs and tears 
and whispers ceased, as they cease with 
a tired child; he rolled over towards 
the fire, and snapped his fingers at the 
dropping coals, and stayed awhile tak¬ 
ing his rest. 

It was not many minutes, however, 
before the little man was all alert again, 
66 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


refreshed and ready for the fray, and 
he dusted himself, and went up to his 
friend’s room. 

Mr. Pastner was resting quietly, un¬ 
der a mild opiate. 

“This is no place for you, Pastner,’’ 
Geoffrey said, rousing him. “It is no 
place for Priscilla. If she is to nurse 
you back to strength, you should be 
removed at once to your own house. 
That is what the doctor thinks best. 
And if you are going to be removed at 
all, it may as well be now as any day, 
my dear boy. ’’ 

A flush mounted the pale forehead; 
for the instant the lethargy was all 
gone; a glance of inquiry shot from the 
eager eye. 

“Well,’’ said Geoffrey, “I suppose 
you know best about it. Perhaps I am 
too abrupt. I can only speak for Pris- 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


cilia. When she saw you yesterday 
morning and kissed that hand of yours 
she confessed it all.” 

“You think so?” murmured Pastner. 

“I know so.” 

“It —it seems impossible.” 

“That is because you have been 
blind these last weeks. Do you think 
a girl’s No is always No? There are 
other telltales than the tongue. At 
any rate, Priscilla— Well, I have 
gathered her wishes, and they are 
yours. As for what remains, we can 
send up the hill for the long sleigh, 
with the seats out, and a single mat¬ 
tress in it, and you can be laid in 
that, just as you are, wrapped in all 
the blankets necessary, and covered 
with the furs. The chestnuts will carry 
you up the hill in twenty minutes, and 
Priscilla will follow along in the cutter; 

68 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


and that can come back for me. I will 
see to it at once if you say so.” 

“If I say so!” whispered the other. 

“And have the minister here.” 

Mr. Pastner opened his eyes wide, 
as if a great awe obliged him, a doubt, 
a terror, a joy, an assurance. “Yes,” 
he breathed — “yes.” And in the 
pause before the other left the room 
he seemed to be asleep again. But 
it was not sleep. It was more like a 
trance of still delight, and then a meas¬ 
uring of himself and his desert and his 
power to give happiness, a resolve to 
be worthy of so benign a fate as this 
that had befallen him. 

Geoffrey brought Priscilla into the 
room presently, and seated her by the 
bed, so that when their friend opened 
his eyes they should rest first on her. 
He had told her that Mr. Pastner 
69 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


wished to be married and removed to 
the hill at once, which was his arrange¬ 
ment of the truth. And Priscilla, feel¬ 
ing that if it was to be, it might as 
well be now as any time, had made no 
objection. She was doing it for Geof¬ 
frey—her poor Geoffrey; let it be done 
with a good grace. And if the man 
were dying, why not give him this one 
happiness for the end? She was in a 
mist, in a dream; her moral sense was 
benumbed by the blow she had re¬ 
ceived. Moving slowly, looking 
vaguely, whether it were right or 
wrong she never asked. It was to be 
done. It was all she could do for 
Geoffrey. 

But when Mr. Pastner at length 
opened his eyes again and met hers, 
such a shining of sudden joy filled 
them that through all her semi-stupor 
70 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


it touched her with a new sensation, 
as if Ithuriel’s lance of light had pene¬ 
trated the darkness, and given her a 
glimpse of the injury she might be 
doing him. A momentary glimpse 
only; it was gone with the sound of 
Geoffrey’s voice in the next room; but 
it had sent a soft sweeping blush over 
her face, a blush that made her look 
infinitely lovely. 

“Are you sure?” he murmured. “Is 
it so? Are you—after all—are you 
going to be my wife?” 

She bent her head. 

“Do you love me, then, Priscilla?” 
he said. “Stoop down and kiss me if 
you love me, dear. Or am I only 
dreaming? If you are a dream, stoop 
down and kiss me all the same.” 

She hesitated half a moment. Love 
him. There was no such thing as love. 

7 1 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


She had just proved it. But stoop 
down and kiss him? Yes, she could 
do that for any sick and suffering soul. 
But she did not say to her own per¬ 
ception that she was a dream, or that 
she was in a dream, dazed, and but 
half aware of herself, aware only of 
the thing that was straight before her. 
She stooped down and kissed him, 
rosy still, but not with any sense of 
shame. And then Geoffrey and the 
minister had come, and she went 
through her part in the same unruffled, 
half-conscious way, and then helped 
wrap her husband in the blankets and 
the robes, and the men took him 
down to the big sleigh, and laid him 
in, and covered him, and dashed away; 
and she put on her cloak and the little 
shawl of the farmer’s wife, and fol¬ 
lowed in the cutter, as it had been ar- 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


ranged, and was up at the great house 
on the high hill-side just as Mr. Past- 
ner had been made comfortable in his 
own room. 

She looked round the spacious room 
where the sun poured in over oriental 
rug and costly carving, and the wide 
windows framed their splendid moun¬ 
tain picture of snowy hill and violet 
distance, with no sense that it was hers, 
that now she was mistress of noble 
mansion or princely fortune, with no 
other sense than that she was here, and 
that the next thing to do was to sit 
down by the bedside. Something had 
delayed Geoffrey a few moments. She 
was listening for him, unaware that 
that was the only thought in her mind. 
She sat looking straight before her till 
she heard him. Then she rose and 
laid aside her cloak. 

73 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


Mr. Pastner’s eyes followed her. 
“My wife,” he said. She came to him. 
“I am not going to die,” he whis¬ 
pered. “I might have died. You 
have saved me. Now I shall be 
well.” And then, in the stroke of 
a flash of lightning, Priscilla felt 
not the injury she had done this 
man, but that she had made herself 
a prisoner, and that Jerome Salter 
was abroad in the world. And she 
fell down and hid her face in the 
coverlet. 

What was Jerome Salter to her? 
Nothing. Nothing indeed—but still 
—oh, the place was sore, so sore! Her 
husband lifted his well hand and laid 
it on her head as she knelt. It sent a 
shudder through her; she trembled 
from head to foot. Oh, how unworthy 
of that kind touch! Heaven help her! 

74 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


Her heart was broken—her heart was 
broken! 

He thought she was praying. And 
so, in the real truth of things, she was 
—a prayer that had its own answer. 
What did those women do whose joy 
on earth had ceased—those sister¬ 
hoods of holy women? They cared for 
the sick and dying. Here was one sick 
and but lately dying at her hand. When, 
at sound of Geoffrey’s step she arose, the 
smile on Mr. Pastner’s face was radiant. 

“I want you—to go over the— 
house—and look at your domain,” he 
said, laboriously, the courtesy of his 
nature triumphing over his weakness 
and his disconnected thought. “Or 
will you wait—till I can take you?” 

“I shall have to wait,” she an¬ 
swered, “for it is time I went to give 
my afternoon lesson.” 

75 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


He looked at her an instant, a little 
puzzled. “Your lesson?” And then 
he laughed, even in his faintness. 
“You sweet, simple heart!” he said. 
“Don’t you know—there are no more 
music lessons?” 

“There—there must be,” said Pris¬ 
cilla. 

“My dear fellow,” said Geoffrey, 
coming in, “how you have revived! 
You needed the counter-shock. Ah, 
happiness is a great tonic.” 

“Look here,” murmured Mr. Past- 
ner, grimly. “Priscilla thinks—she 
must—go on with her lessons.” 

Geoffrey laughed. “You can’t give 
lessons and take care of your hus¬ 
band,” he said. 

“We—must buy out the lessons,” 
said the other, smilingly. “Will you 
attend to all that, Geoffrey?” And 
76 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


now, thoroughly tired out, he was 
asleep almost before Geoffrey replied. 

It was as Geoffrey had said—hap¬ 
piness is a great tonic. It can lift the 
force of a shock to the nerves when it 
comes like a shock itself; and if it can¬ 
not mend broken ribs or cure burns or 
repair the injury of interior surfaces, 
it can make the conditions favorable 
for the healing of all hurt. To see Pris¬ 
cilla’s face of what he deemed gentle 
concern, to see her moving about, to 
hear her sweet low tones, to be sensi¬ 
ble of her surpassing beauty, to note 
the intense tenderness and pity of the 
eyes that followed Geoffrey, to see the 
color mount the rich velvet of her 
cheek sometimes at idle words of his 
—he could not conjecture why—was 
all an elixir of life. As before this he 
had not cared to live, now he was de- 
77 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


termined not to die. He did not ob¬ 
serve that his wife gave him no caresses, 
that her morning and evening kiss was 
a perfunctory matter: there was some¬ 
thing pleasant to him in this chaste 
shyness; he did not know that even 
that kiss was given through the irre¬ 
sistible impulse of compassion. And 
when, at his wish, Geoffrey supplied 
her with costly garments and laid 
some jewels in her hands, he did not 
love her less that she left the jewels 
where she dropped them. Even a 
suspicion of her apathy did not pene¬ 
trate through his own weakness, and 
he did not know it was only because 
she found it then all but impossible 
to sing, that she covered over many a 
long lapse into silence by the gentle 
playing of dreamy nocturnes. Nor 
did any sense of the wealth now hers, 
78 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


or of the luxury and charm of the house 
appear to have the least effect upon 
her consciousness; her eye was insen¬ 
sible to the soft tones of the draperies 
and of the deep pile in which she set 
her feet; her frame did not feel the 
cushioned ease of low silken arm¬ 
chairs and divans; she had ceased to 
be sensitive to beauty in picture or 
sculpture, or in the china that was 
priceless as precious stones, and the 
ring of the gold plate, whose vibra¬ 
tion gave Geoffrey’s nerves a pleasant 
thrill like music, was unheard by her. 
She was benumbed through all the 
avenues by which pleasure had ever 
reached her. 

The fact with Priscilla was that the 
blow which had killed her love had 
nearly killed her, not in her physical 
but in her mental and moral being. 

79 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


She felt no repulsion for Mr. Pastner, 
no hostility towards him; she was 
neither glad nor sorry that he recov¬ 
ered. Nothing about him affected 
her personally. His superb stature, 
the purity of his large Northern type, 
the fearless clearness of his great gray 
eyes, the wholesome sweetness of his 
mouth, the open frankness of his coun¬ 
tenance, the nobility and generosity of 
his nature, all this had mattered noth¬ 
ing to her when he was well; it could 
not matter less now. She experienced 
only one simple series of emotions in 
relation to him,—a deep and kindly 
gratitude that he had saved Geoffrey’s 
life, and what was more than life to 
Geoffrey, the model; that of course 
she belonged to him, but as the pay¬ 
ment of a debt, as the price of Geof¬ 
frey’s happiness; that it all gave Geof- 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


frey contentment—Geoffrey, to whom 
so much of happiness had been denied; 
and that for herself it was no sort of 
consequence whatever, any more than 
what became of her ashes after she 
was dead. If she had been a shadow, 
she could hardly have felt less. 

But now, as soon as the burns on 
Mr. Pastner’s hand and side began to 
heal, they healed rapidly; and with 
that the strength which the nervous 
shock had so suddenly prostrated be¬ 
gan to come back to him. He was 
showing the vivid interest in things 
about him that he used to show. He 
was inquiring into the condition of the 
model, and where its fragments had 
been set up, and into the condition of 
Geoffrey’s mind regarding it as well. 
He could be assisted the length of the 
room. Then he could go up and 
81 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


down stairs. Then he could have his 
fur coat put on and walk on the piazza. 
The doctor declared it needed only a 
Southern month or two to complete 
the cure. “Come,” he said, one day, 
“now we will have our wedding 
journey.’ ’ 

“And will Geoffrey go, too?” asked 
Priscilla, wistfully. 

“Why — if — if he will — if you 
wish,” stammered Mr. Pastner. 

“ Not I, ” laughed Geoffrey. “What 
are you thinking of, Priscilla? And 
leave my model and the unlimited bank 
account you make mine for its sake — 99 

“For Priscilla’s sake,’’ said Mr. 
Pastner. 

“For no matter whose sake! And 
make a holy show of myself in the 
great world? Not I. Two are com¬ 
pany. Go and take your pleasure and 

82 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


come back to me. The house, the 
mountains, the model, and I will all be 
here.” 

And Mr. Pastner—too full of glad¬ 
ness in his recovery, in the return of 
strength, in the assurance of health, in 
the companionship of his wife, a glad¬ 
ness all hope of which he had aban¬ 
doned, to notice that it was not she who 
was full of anything of the sort, to 
notice that she was only full of pa¬ 
tience—folded round his wife the rich 
furs that had been ordered for her, 
and took her on her wedding journey. 

It was a brief wedding journey. 

To Geoffrey, drawing and designing, 
rapt in his ideas, his imaginings, his 
creating, it seemed a mere morning 
excursion that brought them back 
again—Priscilla very pale and stately, 
Mr. Pastner paler and more stately still. 
83 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 

Geoffrey asked no questions; he 
wished to hear nothing. Perhaps it 
did not occur to him that there was 
anything to hear. At any rate, he 
never did know anything about that bit¬ 
ter hour when the husband learned of 
the mistake he had made, but refused 
to give his wife the freedom she woke 
from her trance sufficiently to ask. 
No, she was his care still; the moun¬ 
tain house should still be hers; she 
should have Geoffrey there as she had 
had him before; and for what re¬ 
mained, although they had made a sad 
error, she was his wife, and must abide 
by it, and live as became his wife. 
She was not to be troubled by his 
presence. And then for a moment he 
had thrown his arms about her in a 
forgetfulness of love and grief, and had 
flung her away as quickly, angry that 

84 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


even then she stood passive, with no 
resistance, not only with no sign of 
fervor, but with no sign of affront. 

Mr. Pastner staid a week or two at 
the mountain house, attending to vari¬ 
ous requisite details, and acquainting 
Geoffrey with bank affairs and other 
matters. 

“My health/’ he said to Geoffrey, 
“and some important arrangements 
make it necessary that I should be 
absent. You will take care of my wife?” 

“Of Priscilla? Of course,’’ said 
Geoffrey. “But absent — why, I 
do n’t see what I am going to do with¬ 
out you. Not for long, I hope. 
Priscilla takes no interest whatever 
now in what I am doing. Priscilla is 
quite a different woman since the fire. 
I think it shocked her. She is simply 
numb—wrapped up in herself. I want 
85 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


you, I need you here, every day, 
George, to discuss these new bearings. 
Now here is a problem—” 

“My dear man,” said Mr. Pastner, 
“I have been confronted with a more 
serious problem, and am unable to solve 
it. And there is the whistle of the 
train round the mountain. Good-by!’’ 


86 


Ill 


I T was a languid and silent young 
matron who presided at the table 
in those long, lonely days, when Geof¬ 
frey, nervous, elate, and talkative, was 
wheeled in by the man that Mr. Past- 
ner had provided for him, and filled 
the time with dissertations upon his 
work. 

“It is a most singularly constructed 
universe/' he exclaimed, after they 
were alone, one noon. “All things 
are so interconnected. You touch one 
string and all the others vibrate. Here, 
in finishing one invention, I find my¬ 
self on the verge of something as far 
beyond that as the universe of Orion 
87 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


is beyond the sun and moon and 
seven stars. It tempts me to pro¬ 
ceed with it, to look into it a little 
further— Why don’t you say some¬ 
thing, Priscilla? Why do n’t you 
speak? I expected you would remon¬ 
strate, you would urge me to stick to 
my last—that is my first—” 

“Oh, no,’’ said Priscilla. “I would 
rather you did what you like best to 
do.” 

“I should think you were be¬ 
witched!” cried Geoffrey. “Pos¬ 
sessed! Is it possible that Jerome 
Salter—” 

“Do not speak of him!” exclaimed 
Priscilla, with her blue eyes sparkling. 
“I do not know him. He is dead. 
He never existed.” 

“That is all right. Still, although 
I had an affection for the fellow my- 
88 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


self, he is not quite worth such hero¬ 
ics. ” 

“No,” she said. “That is true.” 

“In point of fact,” said Geoffrey, 
cracking a nut, “I believe he is alive 
and enjoying himself very well, after 
the fashion of the prodigal son, in 
Paris, although he has not yet come to 
the husks.” But as she said no more, 
he went on: “Well, then, with no re¬ 
grets for Salter, and married to a man 
of the Northern Sagas, with more 
money than you know how to spend, 
and mistress of this baronial house, 
what in the world is the matter with 
you? You seem to be more dead than 
alive! ” 

“I am,” she said. 

But, whether or no, from day to day 
Priscilla went through the ordinary 
motions of life. She accepted service 
89 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


at the hands of her maids; she agreed 
to what the housekeeper said; she 
went out to walk every morning, if the 
horses did not come round first; if they 
did, she went to drive. She received 
the calls of her old music scholars, of 
the college youths and dons who had 
been wont to call upon her before, of 
the village gentry who had not been 
wont to call before. She listened, as 
if her life depended on it, to all that 
Geoffrey said about his new principle 
of motion; and she read every week 
the letter that arrived from her hus¬ 
band. 

“Geoffrey, dear,” she said, humbly, 
one twilight when he was playing out 
one of his miseries, “play to me some 
happy things. You are happy now, 
Geoffrey, are you not?” 

“I !»» 


90 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


“Do you suppose any one is hap¬ 
py?’’ she asked, wistfully. 

“For a moment, the bird on the 
bough. Play happy things? There is 
no happy music. Under it all is the 
note of sorrow. The maddest, mer¬ 
riest dance music is the saddest of the 
whole. That note of sorrow—do you 
suppose I, with my findings, should 
not find that?’’ 

“My poor child! I had hoped I had 
made you happy.’’ 

“You?’’ he said, with mild surprise 
on his beautiful face. “You might 
say Pastner had. You might say 
Pastner had tried. But it was idle 
effort. How shall I ever be happy? 
If I had an answer from the genius 
dwelling inside the photosphere — 
after the first instant it would be 
I, this little manikin.’’ Priscilla’s 
91 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


heart was a lump of lead as she heard 
him. 

And so it was all for nothing. 

Dejection hung over her now, like a 
shroud; the days were so long, so slow; 
there was nothing they could bring her, 
she said. She would have been satisfied 
were each day the last; but she did 
not even wish to die. Only one day 
was marked more distinctly than 
another because on such a day a letter 
came, an unwelcome letter. 

They were such letters as any friend 
might write another. He hoped she 
was well; he trusted that Geoffrey was 
succeeding; he felt that Geoffrey’s 
ideas were inspirations, if only they 
could be made practicable; he sent her 
some new music that he had heard, and 
told of the way it moved the throng at 
the concert. He was in New York, 


92 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


and had seen a play—he described it 
to her; he was in Washington, and 
had seen Congress at work—he made 
her see it, too; he was in New Orleans, 
and he took her with him to the 
French market; he was tarpon-fishing, 
and he would have her share the ex¬ 
citement and danger with him. How 
was she to tell with what heart-beats, 
with what heart-sinking, with what 
heart-ache these calm and pleasant 
pages were written? Nothing in them 
whispered to her the sharp regret at 
the ruin of her young life, the lonely 
bitterness over the ruin of his own. It 
did not seem that he who wrote them 
could be in the least unhappy. 

Opening them, at first with hesita¬ 
tion, even with reluctance, Priscilla pres¬ 
ently found herself reading them a sec¬ 
ond time, found herself looking for them. 

93 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


At all events they made a break. One 
day, she did not know why, but prob¬ 
ably because she was human and kind, 
she answered one of them—briefly 
enough, but telling him in a page or 
two of the affairs of the big farm as 
they came to her. His letters to her 
began simply enough with “My dear 
Wife” — a form merely. It seemed 
only natural and necessary that she 
should say “My dear Husband,” as 
he had pitched the tone; and she 
signed hers “Priscilla.” At least she 
owed him that. 

The winter had worn away at last, 
with Priscilla sometimes buried in vast 
snow-drifts, her German lexicon, a long 
stretch of practice, or rather purposeless 
study of counterpoint and composition 
for companion, walking to-day, driving 
far to-morrow, listening to Geoffrey, 
94 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


soothing his discontents, sympathizing 
with his enthusiasm, and trying to un¬ 
derstand what it was all about and why 
he cared. Now the wild March winds 
had blown the vapors from the hills in 
long scarfs and webs, and off and 
away to distant skies, and the April 
rains were melting the snow in the 
deeper valleys and filling the air with 
fresh earthy scents, and there were 
gauzy veils of pale blue bloom over all 
the landscape, now and then letting 
out sudden visions of the hill-tops like 
glorified spirits looking on the earth. 

Priscilla had been walking in the gar¬ 
den, where the borders had been un¬ 
covered, the paths raked, and all made 
ready for the first warm weather that 
should allow the plants to be brought 
from the greenhouse. She stopped, 
leaning her arm on the broad parapet 
95 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


which walled one edge of the garden 
over a considerable precipice under 
which a rushing brook brawled on its 
way to the lakes below. Far stretched 
the tender blue sky with a brooding 
mother-love across the earth, the earth 
far-stretching too, with hills and inter¬ 
vals all mirroring the soft azures of the 
heaven, shadowing under passing 
clouds to violet that melted into the 
somber depth of great forests, into the 
green gilding of springing wheat, the 
dun gold of dry ploughed fields—all 
large and lovely and full of life. As 
she leaned there and looked out, sud¬ 
denly she felt herself suffused with joy, 
as if on the instant she had recognized 
the inner meaning of all nature, the 
hidden things of creation—had for the 
first time understood that earth was so 
beautiful, fate was so kind, God was 

96 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


so near. As her glance came back 
from the peacefulness of the great 
view, it fell on a little mother-bird sit¬ 
ting serenely in her lately-built nest 
and regarding her fearlessly with her 
soft black eye. Tears rushed to Pris¬ 
cilla’s eyes, tears of a quick delight; 
she moved gently away, followed by 
that fearless glance. “I will not hurt 
you, little bird,” she said; “we are 
just two mothers together!” 

But the letter which she had in her 
hand was the last that she mailed to 
her husband that year. She could not 
speak of her great sweet secret—that 
was impossible—and it filled all her 
thoughts. He wrote that he missed 
her letters, short as they were; but 
they had been given out of her good¬ 
ness, and feeling that he had no claim, 
he must abide her will in the matter. 


97 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


He never said how hard it was for him 
to live without her, without other word 
of her than the bare mention that came 
from Geoffrey, absorbed in his levers 
and balances, how hard to write on 
with his own weekly letter and have 
no sign in response. 

But he did write on. He had estab¬ 
lished himself for the time in a hunting 
region not too remote from telegraphs 
and post-offices; he told her of the 
hunt, of the sounds and sights of 
nature, but he never reproached her 
with being the cause of his isolation 
from the world of men. And without 
her knowledge of the process, the 
strength and largeness, the purity and 
wholesomeness of his nature must have 
affected her as she read. 

The summer followed the spring. 
The house, the gardens, were full of 
98 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


Priscilla’s singing, the clear voice carol¬ 
ing to heaven, for she was out-doors 
most of the time. She seemed to in¬ 
vite the sunshine into her being; she 
ran down drenched with showers; she 
walked beside Geoffrey’s pony up the 
rocky ways to the eagles’ nests, and 
looked at the young eaglets; and she 
made Geoffrey for a while find pleas¬ 
ure in the strength of the hills. 

Then the grapes were ripe on every 
sunny ledge; the days were short as 
they were splendid; storms washed 
the heavens of stain; and Priscilla’s 
baby came like the last drop of the 
expressed sweetness of the year, when 
the world was all an illumination of 
gold and scarlet glory. 

If an earthquake had moved the 
ground from under his feet, Mr. Past- 
ner would have been no more con- 


99 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


founded than he was one bright Oc¬ 
tober day by a telegram from Geoffrey: 
“Your son came to-day. Priscilla 
happy with her baby. Everything 
propitious. Think I have discovered 
a new force.’’ 

A new force! What new force was 
needed in such a world as this? His 
son! Priscilla’s baby! For an instant 
his feet were on fire to go to her. 

But what was this? Priscilla happy 
with her baby! She did not ask for 
him; she did not think of him; she did 
not say, “Come!” He had declared to 
her that she would never see him till she 
sent for him. He took his gun and went 
out into the woods; but the feathered 
things might have alighted on that 
strong arm; the snake needed not 
slip away from that powerful tread; 
the branches could bend and brush 


JOO 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


that lordly head unfelt; with this great 
joy and awe upon him he could not 
take life, he who had given life. The 
mother-bears, the trembling cubs, the 
birds starting from covert—they were 
all safe that day. 


IOI 












IV 


5 for Priscilla, she had no time to 



^~Y- think of Mr. Pastner. The day 
was not long enough for her to think 
of her baby in. She was well and 
strong and about again very shortly, 
in-doors and out, the color in her 
cheek, the splendor on her hair, the 
smile on her lips, and always her baby 
in her arms—the sleeping, smiling 
baby, the baby that all the house wor¬ 
shiped, and that old Martha, who had 
never left Priscilla, seemed to think was 
the first child ever made. Even Geof¬ 
frey came often and looked at it. 

“Happy little devil!” said he. 
“Yes, one happy thing in the world, 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


for the time being. He has n’t the 
soul vexed out of him with springs 
that won’t spring, with electric currents 
that defy him. By the way, I think I 
am finding out how to photograph the 
unseen colors, Priscilla — if the day 
were twice as long, and I could spare 
the time from my main purpose. But 
the thing has so many hitches; it is 
very depressing, Priscilla.” 

To photograph unseen colors! What 
other colors were needed than the 
damask of this little velvet cheek, the 
heaven-blue of these big eyes? She 
was so full of the joy of them that she 
had not even the power to feel Geof¬ 
frey’s depression, that once would have 
made the earth dark for her. She had 
been wandering in a desert; and she 
had suddenly come upon waving palms 
and running waters and blossoming 

104 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


boughs and singing birds. She sang 
like a bird herself to her baby all day 
long, about the house or out in the 
snow, where she fearlessly carried him, 
—songs the sweetness of which no pen 
might even note, the mere bubblings of 
happiness—if it were really happiness, 
and not a sort of ecstatic excitement. 

And how the boy grew! How 
radiant he was—to her there seemed 
to be a very nimbus of light and health 
about him. What a great handsome 
cherub of a child, kicking and reaching 
and crooning and cooing in the fulness 
of strength and life! She took him on 
her arm, one mild day of the early 
spring, and went through the great 
mansion which, unused or not, the 
housekeeper always kept in such per¬ 
fect order that a particle of dust find¬ 
ing itself there would have been sure 
105 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


it had lost its way and have hurried 
out again. She had never stepped over 
the threshold of any other door in it 
than those of her own room and Geof¬ 
frey’s, and the parlors and dining-room 
of the lower floor. It had been her 
prison in those first dreary months. 
But now it was her boy’s home, her 
little son’s possession; he must see it 
—she would see it with him. And 
throned on her arm he went with her into 
the great library and the music-room 
beyond, from which the grand piano 
had been wheeled for her use into the 
drawing-room, looking at the marbles, 
the bronzes, the paintings, taking the 
cover from the gilded harp, and run¬ 
ning her fingers through the strings, to 
the child’s apparent pleasure; for al¬ 
ready he loved music. 

She went on, into the chambers 

106 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


above, and into the great attic where 
lay the innumerable playthings of an¬ 
other child—the skates, the sleds, the 
velocipede, the drawing-table, the 
tools, the lathe, the sword and spear 
and shield of his own young carving, 
the books that other child used to 
read, the pipe he used to blow tunes 
out of. 

Then Priscilla came down to the 
room that had been the sitting-room 
of her child’s great-grandmother, a 
room lined with old portraits of the 
dead and gone Pastners, with their 
calm, proud, fair faces. Would her 
boy be as strong, as fine as they? The 
question struck her suddenly, had she 
taken the pains to make him so by first 
making herself all that was noble? And 
just as suddenly she asked herself 
could she make him this, she alone and 
107 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


without help? And she held him so 
closely, half-smothering him with her 
swift caresses, that the little fellow cried 
out; and going into the next room she 
was obliged to sit down and pacify 
him. 

It was the room which had belonged 
especially to her husband’s mother. 
It had been hung long since in tapes¬ 
tries, of pale blues and greens, in a de¬ 
sign of scrolls and vases and flowers; 
and there were old Jacobite tables and 
consoles there of tarnished silver, on 
which lay some miniatures, painted in 
pale water-colors. It had about it an 
indescribable atmosphere of cool and 
innocent refinement. From its bal¬ 
conied windows stretched a wide ring of 
distant purple mountain-peaks touched 
with gold, and a valley view where, 
through sunbeams, the darkest tinges 
108 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


of verdure melted into deep violet, and 
a green and purple sea of hills seemed 
to toss below, now and then, all the 
world of soft rich sheen and color, as a 
shower or a cloud passed over, spanned 
by a fleeting rainbow. 

But it was not the view, of course, 
that had suddenly hushed the child’s 
crying. She looked about her to find 
what it was he saw that so pleased 
him. His tearful eyes were shining 
like violets wet with dew, his mouth 
was open with a glad cry, his arms 
were lifted toward a portrait on the 
wall—the full length portrait of her 
husband. There George Pastner 
stood, as some artist had placed him, 
in the pride of his young manhood, 
the bloom of youth on his face, the 
light on his thick, fair locks, his eagle 
eye softened by the irradiating smile, 
109 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


almost stepping from the frame, like 
some proud young Viking, with his 
lofty stature and his haughty head. 
“Did the child know his father?” she 
was saying then. Oh, no, of course 
not; that was absurd, that was impos¬ 
sible ! He only saw a piece of splendid 
color, and he saw, too, perhaps, a re¬ 
markably vivid presentment of youth 
and courage, of a strong and noble 
man, he who had hitherto seen only 
the servants, the wizened little village 
doctor, the dwarf wheeled about in his 
chair. 

But Priscilla herself — she knew 
him. She gazed at him all at once 
with a new recognition, too. Those 
eyes seemed to be meeting hers; those 
lips were about to part to speak to her; 
that smile was for her—oh, perhaps for 
her and his boy! A thrill shot through 


no 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


her from head to foot—a sudden, un¬ 
expected, unwished-for thrill—a wild, 
sweet thrill that made her hide her 
eyes in the little silken threads of the 
child’s thin curls, and then hurry from 
the room with him, as if the eyes of the 
portrait saw and knew it all. For it 
was he who had given her the treasure 
of her child. 

But she came back into that room 
later in the day, alone, when the west¬ 
ern sunbeam lay full upon the portrait, 
bringing out the innermost secrets of 
its power. She came into it by lamp¬ 
light, holding the lamp over her head 
so that she might throw another light 
on it and yet new expression. She 
came back the next day, and then, she 
could hardly have said why, every day, 
and many times a day. 

One morning she took out all the 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


letters that she had had from her hus¬ 
band — those which she had hardly 
read at all at first, those which began 
to command her attention, those for 
which she had come to look—and she 
read them through again—gentle, calm, 
kind letters, taking everything as a 
matter of course, sending always now 
a message to the last Pastner. “My 
love to my little child/’ he said in one. 
“Kiss my dear boy for me,’’ said an¬ 
other. “Say for me, sometimes, if you 
can, a kind word to my son.’’ What 
sort of a man was he, she wondered 
then, not to hate her, not to punish her, 
not to take the child away from her, as 
he could ? She bent over the crib, where 
the child slept among his lawns and 
laces, in an agony of emotion, of love 
for him, of fear for herself, of confusion, 
alarm, of joy, of she knew not what. 


112 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


She took the boy with her into that 
room which had become like an ora¬ 
tory. What was this she was doing 
with the child who already had begun 
to lisp “mamma?”—she was teaching 
him to look at the portrait and say 
“papa.” She never let him quite 
touch the portrait; she held him away 
from it, but on this side and on that; she 
raised or lowered a shade to change the 
aspect and glance; she had him ob¬ 
serve the luminous eye following him, 
the glad smile greeting him. She 
tried to make it seem a live and breath¬ 
ing thing to the boy; a man, a friend, 
a protector, stepping from that sun¬ 
beam to their side, one to be joyously 
welcomed—even to a baby’s compre¬ 
hension a something above and beyond 
and dear. The child, she reasoned, 
should have some ideal of loftiness for 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


his standard. If he never did in his 
life anything with the thought of which 
he could not meet those searching 
eyes! Her boy, with his storms and 
tempers and loves, his strong individu¬ 
ality, who ought to have a father to 
keep him safe! How many of the 
race there had been for him to be 
proud of—the old soldier with his 
sword, the first of the line since it left 
the Swedish shore; the old minister 
with his angelic brow the last! If this, 
the fourth George Pastner, should 
bring disrepute upon them because his 
mother had kept from him the father 
whose strength of nature and inheri¬ 
tance of law could have held him true 
to his race and name! 

At other times Priscilla thought it 
would be no harm to read the letters 
her husband had written to his mother, 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


when a boy, the letters she had written 
him; they might teach her how to direct 
this child of their blood and likeness. 
It seemed as if she were reading some 
sacred poem in the story of that inno¬ 
cent youth and tender mother’s care, 
the boy away at school, on journeys 
with his father, first seeing the great 
world outside. He had taken her to 
one of the very places mentioned in the 
later letters; she saw how much it had 
meant to him, and how she had ruined 
it. 

One day, at last, the baby was play¬ 
ing in his bath, the wet rings of his 
hair making a glory in the sunlight 
that overlay the glowing little face and 
glistening in all the water-drops of his 
splashing. What a pleasure it was to 
see him, to hear his inarticulate cries 
of joy, to seize him and take him out, 
ns 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


struggling and lifting up his voice in 
rebellion! “Papa! papa!” she said, 
commandingly. And the child stopped 
his outcry and began babbling the 
same sound, eager to be taken to the 
portrait. And all in a breath it rushed 
over Priscilla that she was guilty of 
an unspeakable outrage in keeping 
such a rapture as the daily sight and 
sound and care of this child from his 
father. 

Geoffrey had left his work-room one 
evening some days later, and was sit¬ 
ting at the piano when Priscilla came 
down to dinner. He was in one of 
his despairs, which were as frequent 
with him as his triumphs—indeed, 
rather more so. The thing he sought 
perpetually eluded him—it was just 
before him. He could put his hand on 
it; it was not there; but mocking him, 
116 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 

escaping him, giving him flying 
glimpses of glorious hope, ever going 
on before. It seemed to him now that 
he should live his whole worthless life 
over that model, yet never attain his 
end; and he was pouring his sorrows 
out at the piano, as few knew how 
better than Geoffrey. It was his woe¬ 
begone playing which always would 
quiet the little George when any too 
great excitement set his nerves danc¬ 
ing. Priscilla had left the playing to 
Geoffrey, seldom touching the piano 
herself if he were around, thinking it 
was only justice to let him have some of 
the divine happiness of giving pleasure 
to the household idol. She sang to 
the boy, to be sure, sang loud and 
sweet and clear the best she knew; 
sometimes when she carried him out¬ 
doors and singing so, it might have 
117 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


seemed like angels’ voices echoing 
from scaur to scaur. 

“You will deafen the child,” said 
Geoffrey, meeting her as he wheeled 
himself through one of the garden 
walks, coming from his work-room. 

“He likes it,” laughed Priscilla. 
And then she remembered how Geof¬ 
frey had tried to influence her fancy 
toward George Pastner once by vis¬ 
ions of the training her voice could 
have with his money. 

“I declare,” said Geoffrey, looking 
at her severely, “I never would have 
believed a little thing could have made 
such a difference in you —” 

“He is not a little thing!” cried 
Priscilla, indignantly, the red starting 
to her cheek. “Yes, he is! A dear 
little thing! A darling little thing! 
His mother’s —” 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


“You are entirely lost in him!” her 
brother exclaimed, angrily. 

“I should n’t think you cared for him 
at all!” she cried. “Your own nephew!” 

“The boy is well enough, quite well 
enough; very promising. And I am 
thankful every time I see him that he 
has n’t a hunched back or a club¬ 
foot —” 

“Geoffrey! ” 

“But he will have, if you go climb¬ 
ing round on these mountain paths 
with him the way you do. The very 
dogs who follow you disapprove of it. 
And as for me, once I could command 
your attention a moment. Now I 
might discover how to write messages 
to Mars on space, and it would n’t in¬ 
terest you so much as the fact that the 
baby has two little teeth almost 
through. More than that, you have 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


degenerated to such an extent it 
would n’t interest you in the least.” 

“Oh, Geoffrey, do you think so?” 
And she laid the child in the grass and 
stood pleadingly with her hands on 
the wheel-chair. “Oh, you know bet¬ 
ter,” she said. “You know I am as 
eager for your success as you are. But 
the baby is such a surprise to me; he 
is such a care, too—such a pleasure. 
And you know I have so little other 
pleasure—” 

“So little pleasure!” roared Geof¬ 
frey. “You, full of health and well¬ 
being and winning looks and fine possi¬ 
bilities, with so little pleasure! You, 
with a fortune to spend, a prince for a 
husband! Where is your husband, 
Priscilla? What is he staying away for 
like this? It is beginning to excite 
remark. It may be business, but it is 


120 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


very queer business. Have you had a 
falling out, Priscilla? I ask you, have 
you had a falling out?” 

“How could we have a falling out?” 
faltered Priscilla. “My poor, dear 
boy,” she said then, carrying the war 
into Africa, “you are completely tired 
with your hard study. Why do n’t 
you put it away a little while?” 

“Put it away! Put my life and soul 
and hope and joy and sorrow away! 
Why do n’t you put your baby away?” 

“Put my baby away!” cried Pris¬ 
cilla, running to catch him up. “But, 
Geoffrey, dear,” she said, as she ran, 
“it would really do you good—the 
change—and rest your brain. And 
you could come back to that thing—” 

“That thing! It’s a dozen things!” 

“Well, to all of those problems, and 
see your way straight to conquer 


I 21 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


them, if you would go away—would 
go down to see George —” 

“In that North Carolina gold mine? 
I?” 

“And bring him back with you,” 
said Priscilla, rosy to the nape of her 
neck. 

“That isn’t the sort of rest my 
brain needs. It needs sympathy and 
encouragement and the influx of new 
thought. And the person who gave 
me all these, you, for some unaccount¬ 
able reason, are the means of keeping 
away from me! You had better take 
your boy and do it yourself!” said 
Geoffrey, wheeling off in high dud¬ 
geon. 

That was some days since. This 
evening Geoffrey was in the drawing¬ 
room playing a little prelude of Cho¬ 
pin’s that was nothing but a memory, 


122 



PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


a sob, and a sigh. Priscilla, coming into 
the room, went up behind him as he 
sat, extending her hands over his, 
effacing his, and played the gay meas¬ 
ure of a minuet, that presently changed 
to a march, the wedding march of 
Lohengrin. “Elsa did not know the 
god in her husband, though/’ she 
said. “Do you hear it?’’ she cried. 
“It is the tread of glad feet! It is my 
happiness on the way to me.’’ 

“I wish it were mine,’’ said Geof¬ 
frey. 

“Oh, it is that, too, I hope,’’ said 
Priscilla. 

She had written a letter that day, a 
very brief letter. “My dear hus¬ 
band,’’ it ran, “ will you come to your 
boy and your wife, Priscilla?’’ 

But when that first impetuous rush 
of feeling, that first impulse and action, 
123 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


had subsided, a great doubt took pos¬ 
session of Priscilla. She grew pale 
suffering it. She had kept him away 
so long. What if he did not choose to 
come? What if he had no more con¬ 
cern for the woman who had allowed 
him to deceive himself, who in truth 
had deceived him herself in letting him 
marry her while she yet reeled under 
the blow that had stunned her and 
struck dead, as she had thought then, 
her power for love or passion, who had 
made herself an incubus on his life, 
had driven him from his home, held 
him bound with a chain that by this 
time he might be wanting to break? 
She wished she could go to sleep till 
the week was over that it would take 
that letter to reach her husband, that 
it would take a reply from him to 
come to her. Even the boy in those 


24 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


hard days seemed to realize that some¬ 
thing out of the common was in the air, 
was on the way, that something ailed 
his mother; he would look at her face 
bewildered, and, putting up a grieved 
lip, reach his little hands to smooth 
her cheek, or nestle against it with 
the baby kisses of his little wet mouth. 

“Priscilla,” said Geoffrey, “you are 
more restless than the wind! You 
seem to have divined the secret of per¬ 
petual motion. Either you must get 
yourself quiet, or I must go some¬ 
where else with my work.” It was 
evident, now, as always, that Mr. 
Geoffrey felt not at all that he was 
there because of Priscilla, but that 
Priscilla was there because of him. 
And if here any one had reminded 
Geoffrey of the pauper’s threat of run¬ 
ning away from the almshouse if affairs 
125 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


were not better conducted there, he 
would have failed to see any relevance 
in the remark. Nor would Priscilla have 
seen it—until to-day. It was for Geof¬ 
frey’s sake that she had come here—to 
put the means at his command that he 
needed; if also to repay to Mr. Pastner 
the debt they had incurred for the sav¬ 
ing of Geoffrey’s life and of his model; 
and so again for Geoffrey’s sake. But 
to-day, even over her love of the forlorn 
and hapless brother, pulsed something 
stronger. She was here because she 
was the child’s mother! Her head 
was high and her color was rich; she 
was here because she was George Past- 
ner’s wife! And then the color fell— 
a poor mockery of a wife, to whom per¬ 
haps her husband might never return! 

The balmy air of the mild day was 
perfect; if it blew over Syrian gardens 
126 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


and thickets of roses it would have 
been no blander, no sweeter; the 
heaven wore its deepest blue, the sun¬ 
shine sparkled over every leaf and 
spray and lay on a world of apple- 
bloom below the parapet, and made 
lanes of gold down azure-green and 
purple hollows of the hills. Priscilla, 
carrying her baby, a scarf of blue gauze 
wrapped round them both, moving 
down between the hedges, was only 
an impersonation of all the flowers and 
beauty and splendor of the morning. 
She left the garden, and descended the 
path between the young birches just 
trembling with tender green; a blue¬ 
bird dropped a warble of joy over her; 
the brook ran like a far sweet song 
below. 

The stage had just gone toiling 
along the highway at the foot of the 
127 


PRISCILLA’S LOVE-STORY 


hill. She fancied it had stopped a 
minute or two, she could not say. 

She went on more quickly down the 
hill, her heart beating all over her it 
seemed. Suddenly at a new sound, 
a crackle of a bush, a footstep coming 
nearer, a tread that had the beat of the 
music of the wedding march in her ear, 
she stood aside behind the screen of 
birch and vine, the baby reaching for 
the boughs in the sunshine with a glad 
babble that her kisses did not hush. 
The traveler came up and might have 
passed; her quick breath made it im¬ 
possible to move again. And then she 
summoned her strength and separated 
the tangle, stepped out upon the path, 
confronting him in silence, with the 
child upon her arm, beautiful as some 
young madonna, with her bloom, her 
sweetness, her great solemn eyes. 

128 


PRISCILLA’S LOYE-STORY 


For a moment Pastner stopped, his 
hat in his hand. The vision was too 
radiant; it seemed to him a dream. 
Meeting those eyes, he hardly dared 
breathe, dared hope. 

“Papa! papa!” cried the child, joy¬ 
ously, lifting his little arms as he was 
wont toward the portrait in the house. 
And then he had clasped wife and son 
in his embrace. 

“Oh,” whispered Priscilla, “is it 
true? Do you love me still?” 

“Forever!” he exclaimed. “And 
you? Oh, Priscilla! ” 

“I think,” said Priscilla, looking 
down, and then her whole soul pouring 
in a blaze from her blue eyes to his, 
“that I have never loved any one 
else.” 

And the three went on together to 
their home. 


129 



PRINTED AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS 
BY R. R. DONNELLEY AND SONS 
COMPANY, CHICAGO, MDCCCXCVIII 














t > 

k 














* 
































